


otter pyjamas

by spiritscript



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Crushes, Introspection, Komori centric, M/M, Olympics, Pining, Pre-Relationship, background sakuatsu, just two guys that need to kiss more, komoyaku, seriously, yakukomo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26662879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiritscript/pseuds/spiritscript
Summary: And yet, as Yaku Morisuke looks him up and down; from his bed head to his pyjamas to his slippers, and all the way back to his eyes, he wonders how definitive and complete the past really is.He also wonders if wearing his pyjamas had been a good idea, which intrusively leads to the vague wonder whether it would be more or less embarrassing to not be wearing anything at all. This is the vague wondering that results in the feel of his face and ears turning a little hot. He hopes the dim lights don’t show it.
Relationships: Komori Motoya/Yaku Morisuke
Comments: 13
Kudos: 46





	otter pyjamas

**Author's Note:**

> *Deep breath*
> 
> Hi! If you found this welcome to what has been my brain rot of a few days. This fic has changed greatly since I decided to write some yakukomo because it is a sin that there is not more!!
> 
> Anyway, I love them

Komori Motoya supposes he had a crush on Yaku Morisuke. 

The verb conjugation is important. Has to had means that it is no more. The past simple tense is used to describe something completed, something that is over. It is therefore left in the past, it is no more. It has been left behind him along with awkward acne, a croaking voice, and that one chemistry exam he failed and has yet to forget.

And yet, as Yaku Morisuke looks him up and down; from his bed head to his pyjamas to his slippers, and all the way back to his eyes, he wonders how definitive and complete the past really is. 

He also wonders if wearing his pyjamas had been a good idea, which intrusively leads to the vague wonder whether it would be more or less embarrassing to not be wearing anything at all. This is the vague wondering that results in the feel of his face and ears turning a little hot. He hopes the dim lights don’t show it.

“Nice pyjamas,” Yaku says, a confident smirk on his face, a gleam of the demon senpai he heard about in highschool behind his eyes.

Motoya had seen it in his first year, the way Yaku’s teammates stood to attention around him, even his elders tightening at his words, setting their gazes and fixing their footing, raising gently onto the balls of their feet, almost like boxers, ready for their orders. 

Motoya supposes it was these reactions that first commanded that he too pay attention. It was most certainly these reactions that showed Motoya how much more he could be as a libero. He couldn’t be a captain but that didn’t mean he couldn’t command.

Motoya was a good player and knew this even back then, he’d been told so numerous times, had the awards to show it and the letter of recommendation from one of Tokyo’s volleyball powerhouses so he wasn’t insecure in his abilities, not in the least. Yet in his first year, watching Yaku play made him nervous. Motoya always said he had his team's backs, somewhere in the background setting them up, moving out of their way. He wasn’t a presence so much as a shadow dipping in and out when needed. He was known to the other teams of course, but he was silent. Yaku was so much more. 

Motoya had felt small, so small at that realisation.

He feels small again now.

“Thanks,” he murmurs though he knows it wasn’t really a compliment, “they were a present from Kiyo. Although Atsumu picked them out, actually. Apparently the otters look like me.” 

He looks down at the fuzzy little faces printed all over his body. Kiyoomi is a terrible gift giver - the Christmas before last, he’d received a bottle of shampoo and conditioner, not even the gift boxed kind, in one of the two Christmas bags they’d been exchanging for almost seven years now. He also didn’t want to give Atsumu the satisfaction of embarrassing him or whatever he had hoped to achieve with this (custom made, specially ordered ta fit ya, but they still couldn’t do weasels so them there otters had ta do instead) gift, so he was determined to wear them the entirety of the Olympics.

He curses Atsumu for getting his way in this extremely round-a-bout chain of events which he definitely doesn’t have the capacity to understand should he ever be told.

Yaku barks a laugh and Motoya looks at him, the red heat deepening.

“They’re cute,” he says as his laugh tailors out, a genuine smile on his face.

“I am cute,” Motoya replies without thinking about it.

His crush had begun pretty much as soon as he saw Yaku - it didn’t take much for Motoya to develop an infatuation really. Motoya’s mother always called him loving, kind. His father called him careless. This last adjective was not intended as an insult, nor to hurt; it was a warning, an invitation to learn. His father had sat him down after school when a classmate had broken his favourite pencil and told him; you’re careless with who you trust, just because you’re nice to everyone, doesn’t mean they will be nice back.

Sometimes knowing something makes it harder to come to terms with. 

And so, once again, he had felt that traitorous, bitter flutter in his stomach when he first watched Yaku play. Kiyoomi had remained remarkably silent throughout while Motoya commented on every move Yaku made. Motoya always believed that, as soon as one put a hierarchy on where to learn, they are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again. Watching Yaku in a team he had never heard of before that, proved him he was right.

So even though Nekoma was losing, he watched them carefully. And every dig Yaku made buried itself deep into Motoya’s own body, ensuring the little inkling of a crush would be well protected from any storm.

When Motoya won best high school libero in his first year, Kiyoomi had asked him why he wasn’t happy.

“Because,” he told him as he weaved a new pair of laces into his shoes, “I’m not the best.”

“You think Nekoma’s libero is?” he asked in reply, though it wasn’t said like a question. Motoya nodded and Kiyoomi answered, “then make sure when you win it again, you are."

Yaku’s smile deepens and he raises his hands in the air, “can’t argue with that.”

Motoya supposes he had been lucky that Yaku was from also Tokyo, or at least he thought so at the time. It afforded him a lot more opportunities to see him, to ensure the infatuation buried deep within him was not without sustenance. 

Maybe it didn’t help - this ease, this semblance of his being so close and real but never being able to have it, like trying to hold water in your hands. Maybe at first it was more the idea of him, his skills and proficiency constructing an idea of him in his mind; that idle interest in someone you looked up to. 

Again, knowledge didn’t make it easier.

They never played against each other in a tournament. Komori only ever got to face him once in a challenge match. If he had been enthralled before, this game had only cemented it; carved it in marble, sculpted it in hematite.

He watched him adapt to Kiyoomi’s vicious spikes, saw him call one of Iizuna’s dumps, felt the tension from his own teammates before each of their serves as he stood, eyes set, and filled the entirety of the court. He saw up close as he squared up to one of his own middle blockers for not closing down the cross correctly. He saw all that a libero could be.

Again, Motoya had come to realise just how small he was.

Kiyoomi had caught him watching Yaku between sets and said, “he’s terrifying.”

“Yeah.” Motoya agreed.

He’s embarrassed to admit he stumbled over his own tongue when Yaku had approached him after the game with a compliment.

“You’ve some great game sense, it’s always fun playing against a team with a strong libero. It always makes me want to get better.”

Maybe those words etched themselves in his ribs and arms along with the stinging of his skin and his heart. Even if he believed the compliment was unwarranted.

“No,” Motoya agrees, “but let’s not give Atsumu the satisfaction of knowing he picked a good gift.”

Motoya supposes his younger self would be jealous of him right now, not just for all he has achieved in his life but most specifically for the way he’s making Yaku’s eyes crinkle, the way they’ve familiar to each other. The thing is, he knows Yaku likes him, they’re friends, they share a team, a position and a mutual distaste for one Kansi-ben speaking annoying personification of pretentious arrogance, no matter how much Kiyoomi tries to tell anyone otherwise.

Yaku is... straightforward really. Motoya wishes he was complicated, that there was a justification to his uneasiness. Yaku was straightforward and he knew that he liked Motoya. 

But that that is probably all it is, simple like. 

“You terrified me in high school.” Motoya doesn’t know why he’s saying this, maybe it’s the late night, maybe it’s the almost flirty banter, maybe it’s the nerves for the following day manifesting themselves in another way.

He looks at Yaku, who’s still standing in the doorway to the shared kitchen of their team’s dorms. 

It’s hard to tell due to the minimal lighting, but his face seems to be one of gentle amusement. He walks towards where Motoya is leaning against the kitchen counter, and reaches a hand around him, over his shoulder to get a glass from the cupboard and then moves to fill it with water.

“Huh,” he’s right beside Motoya, but his back is to the light now which casts a shadow over his face. Even though he is so close Motoya wouldn’t even have to reach out to touch him, his voice is barely audible over the running of the tap, “I never would have guessed. You were the one most teams were terrified of.” He states it as the fact that it is, turning off the tap and turning his body, mirroring Motoya’s stace.

“I always thought you were better.” Motoya admits, taking a drink of his own water. 

Yaku is uncomplicated, but every now and then he is hard to read, and his lack of response where usually he would say something, is now one of those moments. 

“What?” Motoya asks.

Yaku shakes his head. “Well, you were wrong, you’d better game sense than me, you were adaptable. Could always see how much your team trusted you. Extremely reliable.”

“Same could be said for you.” 

“Y’know,” Yaku starts, peering at Motoya carefully, “I had a massive crush on you in high school,” he confesses, with all the self-assuredness more suited to declaring an achievement, not for confessing an old high school crush on someone that apparently looked like a cartoon otter.

“Funny,” Motoya grins back, “I had one on you too.”

Yaku smiles and puts his glass in the sink, “I would kiss you, but I’m already too fucking nervous for tomorrow. So I’ll do it after.”

Motoya looks at him, a small quirk on his face, “I didn’t see it before, but maybe this cowardice is why I always beat you in school.”

Yaku fakes a wince, “you always seem so nice, the type of person that could plead guilty and the jury would still find you innocent. But really you’re mean.”

Motoya laughs and that little harboured feeling that he tried so hard to tell himself had been conjugated into the past tense begins to kick him, starts to run around his veins. It is fully formed now; it had been a thought, an idea of a feeling he hadn’t understood, built upon glimpses and inferences from afar. Now he knows Yaku, and he knows it’s more than a crush.

“What if I kissed you? Would that take away some of the nerves?” He asks.

Yaku tilts his head and taps his finger against his chin, “maybe, I guess we’d have to try it and see.”

“Nah,” Motoya says quickly and puts his own glass in the sink, pushing himself away from the counter, “couldn’t be bothered.”

Yaku catches his arm and turns him around, an exaggerated frown slapped onto his features. “No, my pride’s on the line now, you beat me in high school, I have to win this one.”

One of his hands digs into the fabric of Motoya’s pyjamas, smushing and twisting the little otter faces as he pulls Motoya back to him. 

In the split second before he closes the distance between them, Motoya becomes aware of how small he is not compared to Yaku. Maybe this is reckless, Motoya thinks, maybe it is stupid, but he has come to learn that knowledge doesn’t always make things easier to accept. 

And yet, Motoya supposes as he feels Yaku's lips press against his, he doesn’t care.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ohmiyamy) where sometimes I become fixated on hq characters but mainly just chill


End file.
